Background: When it is impossible to measure the weight and height of paediatric patients, these are usually estimated. We undertook this study to see how accurate these estimates are in practice.
Methods: Five observers estimated body height and weight, and subsequently calculated body surface area, in 48 paediatric inpatients who were lying on surgical ward trolleys.
Results: Regression analysis of the data revealed that good correlations existed between estimated and actual body size in all the investigators. However, we found large percentage errors in estimation for infants and younger children with small physical size, and a variation in scatter distribution of estimation errors among the five investigators.
Conclusions: These findings suggest the necessity to titrate drug doses for administration in this small paediatric population.